XMPP Beyond Instant Messaging

How we use XMPP to do many neat features

XMPP is known to be a instant messaging protocol, and is sometime blamed for its extensibility for bad reasons. This talk will try to show how powerful is XMPP, by explaining how we have built many exciting features likes a blog engine, file sharing, the base of a code forge (tickets handlers + merge requests), a universal remote controller and even a decentralized web framework on top of XMPP. All of this (and more) are parts of the Salut à Toi ecosystem.

Lastly we have been hearing more often than not XMPP bashing: XMPP is supposed to be bad because it's old, or XML based, it's not based on web technologies (HTTP, JSON), or there are too many XEPs, etc.

This is unfair and often due to a lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of the protocol. This talk will try to offer a different view of XMPP by explaining how we have used it in the "Salut à Toi" ecosystem to offer exciting features like:
- a blog engine
- file sharing (P2P or through a server à la Owncloud/NextCloud), using Jingle
- the base of a decentralised code forge (tickets handling and merge-requests)
- a universal remote control
- forums
- events

In Salut à Toi, XMPP has also been used to build a unique decentralized web framework (Libervia web framework).
We'll see how XMPP can help in this field thanks to the powerful PubSub technology.

Finally, we'll see how gateways can be used beyond messaging, to, for instance allow XMPP to communicate with other protocols like ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon).